Question about 720p vs. 1080p

I

icetrey47

Limp Gawd
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Jun 3, 2006
Messages
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Lets say you have two LCD TVs that are exactly the same size (we'll use 37" for this example) ... except one of them has a native resolution of 720p and the other has a native resolution of 1080p. If one were to connect an xbox 360 (for example) to each of these TVs, which TV would have the better display, assuming the xbox 360 game could only be played at 720p?

I'm basically trying to figure out if having a screen with a native res. of 1080p is going to be WORSE than a native 720p screen for non-HD things and for games that only support 720p. If anyone could enlighten me on this I would appreciate it. Thanks!
 
Well if the internals are good on the 1080p monitor then it shouldn't matter. These monitors have the same aspect ratio. The 1080p monitor will scale the image without distortion an look about the same if it has good internals. By the way, I wouldn't trust westinghouse internals if you were thinking about getting one of those.
 
i think it would look nicer on the one with less pixels, native resolution of 720p better for games that only go up to 720p, otherwise it will look a bit blah.
 
In the case of the 360, I believe it does scaling internally. So if it scales any good the picture should look pretty similar. And if you're thinking about Westinghouse, get the 1080P model. ;)
 
yeah i'm trying to decide between getting a 720p native westy or the 37" 1080p westy that everyone talks about on these boards ... so you're saying they scale correctly?
 
Quite honestly I don't know about the monitors' own scaling . I was saying the 360 does scaling itself, so picture quality should be the same on both. We have a 32" 720p Westinghouse that scales SDTV to have noticeable artifacts, but I can't say it is any worse than any other LCD TV I've seen.
 
Remember, If the LCD has 768 pixels vertically, it's not a 720p-native panel, and it will need scaling. We are talking about 720 to 768 and 720 to 1080 here. The latter should actually have less artifact, due to a simpler 2:3 pixel scaling.
 
1080p = 1920x1080
720p = 1280x720

I don't know about you... but I've seen very few LCD TVs that are at either of these as their native resolutions. Most LCD TVs run at 1366x768 (which is neither rez), so you are going to get scaling either way.

What I think the specs are saying when the LCD TV is 720p or 1080p, is if the circuitry can handle either signal, and do the scaling and such. Also, I suppose if the native rez is only 1366x768, they couldn't technically call it a 1080p device (can they call it a 1080i? I'm not sure.)

The really sad thing about most LCD TVs, is that even if they have HDMI inputs, they won't take a signal at the native rez over it. The HDMI seems to feed right into the scaler... so people end up feeding it some standard computer type rez (like 1024x768) in an attempt to get the best match-up with scaling that they can. But, it is nearly impossible to drive them at native rez, because they assume a signal from a consumer type device and apply over-scan, etc. People end up going analog over VGA so that they can drive them at native rez, and lose the advantage of digitally driving the LCD pixel by pixel. It still probably looks good at the lower resolutions, but is kind of silly IMO.

With an XBox, I guess you're not really going to be able to drive at a 1:1 anyway... so my guess is that the 720p type LCD TV will look as good, if not better than the 1080p. I suppose if the screen size is really huge, having more pixels and then letting the scaler take care of the interpolation might help some.

If you intend on driving it with a computer (and don't need over about 30" size), I'd go with a computer type LCD over a LCD TV. That way, you can plug in via DVI, and drive it at a 1:1 for all the HTPC type stuff. Many of these displays now have built-in component, or even HDMI which will take an XBox or PS2, etc as an input, and do the scaling anyway.

I suppose some LCD TVs could have really good scalers in them... but one would probably have to evaluate this on a case by case basis.

-Steve
 
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